How mean can you get?

MawBroom- I am not harking back, it was a light hearted post which I thought would amuse. Other Gransnetters are sharing similar stories from many years ago.
Quite honestly, it makes me wonder why I bother to be sociable. This is not the first time I have been belittled like this.
I have had enough of Gransnet. Bye bye.

My ex is noted for his meanness. In our smoking days he used to have a packet with one cigarette in it so he didn't have to hand them round.

Is this thread not in danger of turning into another “Misery Memoir”?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAdlkunflRs

I once worked for the wife of the CEO of a very large American Bank. The wife was given a monthly "allowance" of £24,000. Yes, a month!. I was once overpaid by £1 by her. She deducted said £1 from my next wages.

My mother was given a scrubbing brush for her 10th birthday. Her mother died when she was 9 and she had to look after her younger brothers. She had no shoes and had to leave school to look after her brothers. Her father turned to drink and they lost their home so she ended up living in a wooden shack looking after her father and brothers.
I never heard her complain about anything. She would give away her money to anyone she thought had greater need.
In later years she met my dad and he and all our family loved her to bits. She was the most loving person you could meet. The scrubbing brush story was always told with a smile and a laugh.

I used to clean for a someone who often asked if i could do an extra hour, which i did get paid for or an extra day,which i always obliged,often leaving me with her brat of a child,at Christmas she gave me one of those fancy air fresheners looking like a flower,they were 49p in a shop in town
Another lady i cleaned for, and a millionaire ,once gave me back what i had bought her the year before, but to be fair she was really a lovely lady who always made me a drink of coffee and cakes ,, and we chatted for about 30 minutes, she often said dont bother with the kitchen floor if time ran out,she said she would do it

My father was once very angry with me for giving my pet mice a dried butter bean!
When we had central heating installed he wouldn’t allow windows to be opened because that was wasting the heat.
When I was about 13 and still wearing NHS wire framed glasses my mother backed me wanting grown up ones but my father would not pay for them.

When my Dad was 5 years old he went to get his Christmas stocking to see what Santa had left him.

It was a stocking full of coal.

His Dad thought it was funny. From what I understand he laughed and laughed and my Dad cried and cried.

Not that he ever was a Dad to me but that's how the story goes.

Merlot wins, hands down!

I had a holiday job on Ventnor pier when I was 16. I was supposed to be on the candy floss machine but it gave me conjunctivitis so I was lumbered with clearing tables in the café.

A man walked by and threw a half eaten apple on the ground. I went to throw it in the bin but the manager snatched it out of my hand and said, 'There's plenty on there to make some apple sauce for the pork chops.'

In the 80s working in a private hospital .... a now-dead flamboyant and well known captain of industry and his girlfriend had enjoyed their whole roast chicken that they'd ordered from outside.

The girlfriend presented me with the carcass wrapped in foil - I swear it was denuded of any flesh - and told me to help myself!

I handed it back and said, no thanks!

SiL had insisted that each Christmas we send the same card to each other and so it went, back and forth. When she died she certainly hadn't been short.

Honestly I can’t see why anybody is harking back to the days when they earned 5/- an hour. That puts it in 1970 or earlier?
Does that really still rankle?
So many things have happened to all of us in the last 49 years - why let this bother you now?

I used to work for a rather eccentric consultant. One Christmas he turned up with presents for his two PAs (I was one of them) They were small unwashed margarine tubs with 5 chocolate truffles, hand rolled by his young daughters, in each tub.

The following year it was a single polyanthus each from the local supermarket.

Didn’t expect one son I have never been disappointed.

DH and I have what is described as a micro company and I have always given my employees a Christmas present ( usually money or a voucher paid for by me and DH ) I have never in over 20 years had so much as a Christmas card in return .

I think a lot of employers buy some staff presents, especially secretaries etc. I worked for a large government organisation. Everyone's salary was known to every one else (pay scales easily accessible to all). One of the secretaries I worked with did all sorts of jobs for her four bosses including going out in her lunch hour to do their shopping, buy presents for their wives etc. These men were on about £80,000 a year. They were SO generous at Christmas to their PAs. The four of them put together and bought her a £10 Marks & Spencer voucher.

On his 2nd birthday, DS was in hospital following a big operation. My inlaws, his paternal GPs, turned up without a present. They were not poor.

Also, why would you expect a Christmas present from your employer?

Giving people raspberries is not mean. How do you know she wasn't going to share what she had among more people?

One Christmas, an employer of mine gave me a mug that had been given to her by a rep. It had the name of the company he was selling for, printed right across it. She even wrapped it up in festive paper! It didn't make it back to my house.

Not a case of meanness, more behind the times.
A sweet elderly lady was admitted on my ward from a care home, she had no visitors so l would sit and chat with her during my break times.
After her discharge I popped in to see if she had all her stuff packed up.
'You have been so kind to me' she said. 'Pass me my handbag because I want you to go and treat yourself to something really special'.
And wth that she pressed 20p into my hand.
Bless!

S

Someone I know had relatives visiting from South Africa. She invited them to tea. She gave them each two cream crackers with a small piece of cheese on them. That was it.

It isn't the wages I was commenting on, but the Christmas present.

My FIL gave my OH a shirt that we had gifted to him 15 years previously! He never did like spending money!